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BOOK OF EQUANIMITY - Case 30

The same question asked twice, each time seemingly contradictory responses ...

When all of space and time are someday destroyed, when all the universe or universes (if there are universes upon universes as some scientists theorize) finally vanish ...

... does that beyond small human thoughts of "creation" and "destruction", "appearing" or "vanishing" disappear or not, vanish or not?

First the teacher answers "destroyed, vanished", then the teacher answers "not destroyed, not vanished". Why?

For this "not destroyed, not vanished" ... is ... the very dance of creation and appearance, destruction and disappearance.

For this "not destroyed, not vanished" ... is ... free of creation and appearance, destruction and disappearance.

For this "destroyed and vanished" ... is ... precisely not destroyed, not vanished.

For this "destroying and vanishing" ... is ... always thoroughly destroying and vanishing.

Sit beyond and escaping all human judgments of birth and death, start and finish, temporary and permanent, separate and connected, this and that, near and far ...

Sit through-and-through, right in the raging fires of constant birth and death, starts and finishes, temporary and permanent, separate and connected, this and that, near and far ... where you cannot escape, no need to escape, no place to run.

Then (as the Preface sings) all relativities and dualities are extintinguished. Far off Choan (an ancient city in far off, long ago China) is both on the other side of the world and long ago, and beyond all near and far, now and then. Taizan (Tozan) once described Buddha as three poinds of flax cloth, the ordinary thing as Holy Buddha, but one can sit beyond and through and through their being different or the same, sacred or profane ... and then they are exactly, differently Sacred-Profane!

QUESTION 1:

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

QUESTION 2:

In Zen Practice, we learn to be completely free of dualities right in and as a world of dualities ... birth/death, sickness/health, young/old etc. etc. Having practiced Zen for awhile, are you getting the hang of that?

Note: I feel that Shishin Wick's commentary this week does a good job on describing how everything is impermanent beyond permanence, but I feel he could have done a little better job describing how to drop both "permanence" and "impermanence" permanently. For those without a book, the Koan and commentary can be read here ...

Here is the Koan, by the way, for those without the book ... (A chilicosm is a very very very long time, the lifetime of the universe) ...

Daizui's kalpa fire

Preface to the Assembly

It extinguishes all relativities and cuts off duality. To break off the ball of doubt what phrase can be adopted! Choans not more than a tiny step away. Taizan's weight is only three pounds. Tell me, according to what principle does one speak thus?

Main case

Attention! A monk asked Daizui, "In the raging of kalpa fire, chiliocosms are together destroyed. I wonder if this is destroyed or not destroyed?' Daizu replied "destroyed". The monk asked, "If so, does everything go with it?" Daizui said, "Everything goes with it."

The monk asked Ryusai, "In the raging kalpa fire, chiliocosms are destroyed. I wonder if this is destroyed or not destroyed?" Ryusai replied, "It's not destroyed." The monk asked, "Why is it not destroyed?" Ryusai said, "Because it's the same as the chiliocosm."

Appreciatory verse

Destroyed and not destroyed, everything goes with it -- chiliocosms.
The phrase didn't function as hook and chain at all;
The feet with brambles are hindered greatly.
Understood and not understood.
The crystal-clear matter -- so long-winded!
Those who know when taking it up shouldn't barter;
In my story whether to buy or sell is up to you.

First reaction:
When I'm sitting and the end of this world comes, good.
when I'm sitting and the end of this world does not come, also good.
We will all soon find out at the end of this one breath.
Where do we go after death? Ask the dead

Question 1: I was told once Nishijima Roshi answers dualistic questions about God and/or Buddha, Buddhism or Christianity with "Both true" I'd like to stay with that. Sit, chop wood and fetch water.

Question 2.

I think the question is about the fear of death and what the use of Zazen is in all of this?
My answer? It's not up to me and even understanding it all with all the wisdom of the ages, will not change it one bit. This “I” will end someday and with it “my” world will be destroyed. No great big epic fire needed, just the end of this one breath and the world will continue on its way. And that is the way things are. What does it matter if it is an epic kalpa fire from the gods? How long? How far? What wil remain? Why? How do you know? Why should I take your answer? etc. etc. The pit of questions is without a bottom. Maybe Daizui's answer is in the lines of whatever you choose to believe is fine. He gives you both. Take your pick and good luck with it. Both true!! Will it change your practice to know the answer? Or have any bearing on shikantaza? Nope.

Where will I go after physical death? I don't know. Why was I here? I don't know. To completely lose the self while sitting and accomplishing total letting go, in itself already is taking a plunge in that what remains after this kalpa fire. So yes, it get's destroyed and no it cannot be destroyed. This is why no one is out there searching for the reincarnation of Dogen Zenji I guess?

So, I try to live this life to the fullest, serve God and you all right here right now because that is enough for me. Practice to mature, ease suffering for myself and others. Have a laugh whenever I can and leave the stage silently one day, without leaving too big of a mess. What happens after death? Ask the dead.

Another thought on this koan if you all don’t mind?
There is great patience in the answers. I think maybe the monk wanted to pose an impressive question showing the depth of his intellectual understanding of scriptures and testing the Master. Daizui could have scolded him but decided to answer on the level the monk was simulating to be, showing how knowledge will not give any insight in this. I wonder what Jundo or Taigu would have written if one of us would have asked that question? Oh I know:

TROW IT ALL AWAY!
TROW IT ALL AWAY!
TROW IT ALL AWAY!
TROW IT ALL AWAY!

2- I like to tell the story of Minnie; my inherited 93 yr old charge in the form of my dead uncle's sister. She once told me, "I don't know what my death will be like but I think it will be a wonderful experience. If it isn't; who cares?" She lived another 10 years kicking and screaming, hating every minute. That's when I learned that some people only tell you what they think you want to hear.

gassho, Shokai

仁道 生開 - Jindo Shokai "Open to life in a benevolent way"
Just another itinerant monk going nowhere; try somewhere else to listen to someone who really knows.

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

I don't care, it makes no difference whether there is a Golden Chair inside my room, outside my room or no Golden Chair at all.
In (za)zen I lose (things) and don't gain. I let go and don't attach. So the problem is not the Golden Chair, but other additional stuff if one wants to keep one's place clutter free. And this stuff includes even the Buddha.

It is as it is. How is it?
Socrates said "I know that I know nothing."
The Pyrrhonian skeptics commented this with "You can't even know that you know nothing."
I answer: "I don't care."

Originally Posted by Jundo

QUESTION 2:

In Zen Practice, we learn to be completely free of dualities right in and as a world of dualities ... birth/death, sickness/health, young/old etc. etc. Having practiced Zen for awhile, are you getting the hang of that?

Is the glass half empty?
Is the glass half full?
- Dunno, I just drink it.

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

Oh Shariputra, form is emptiness, and emptiness is of course form. That's what I hear anyways.

In Zen Practice, we learn to be completely free of dualities right in and as a world of dualities ... birth/death, sickness/health, young/old etc. etc. Having practiced Zen for awhile, are you getting the hang of that?

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

Yes and no.

QUESTION 2:

In Zen Practice, we learn to be completely free of dualities right in and as a world of dualities ... birth/death, sickness/health, young/old etc. etc. Having practiced Zen for awhile, are you getting the hang of that?

It's definitely getting the hang of me! Duality has always been a sour stone in my stomach.

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

"The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas."

There is and there isn't, at once. We transcend yes and no.

QUESTION 2:

In Zen Practice, we learn to be completely free of dualities right in and as a world of dualities ... birth/death, sickness/health, young/old etc. etc. Having practiced Zen for awhile, are you getting the hang of that?
"Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread."

Lets just sit, not worry/attach to what flowers and weeds do, as to whether there is a God or not, destruction or not, compatibility between Zen or Catholicism, etc. Its all good and bad, at once.

God/Buddha/Three Pounds of Flax etc. it can't be answered, it's just lived. Sometimes I need the separation, sometimes I don't. These answers always sound so damn zenny! Nonsense, but not in a bad way.

Question 2.

Sometimes but most of the time not.

Gassho.

Shugen

Last edited by rculver; 05-18-2013 at 03:55 PM.

As a priest in training, please take everything I say with a pinch of salt

Q-1: When I was a little kid in Sunday School they told me that God was everywhere. "Really?" I said amazed, and then I started naming all sorts of places: table, chair, light bulb, etc. "Yes" was the reply to each.

Q-2: Yes, I am hanging on by a thread. Among many things, my practice is grasping and then letting go of dualities. I get caught up a lot, and then I get free for a while. There's always something new to get caught in before realizing it's the same old process/outcome struggle. Rinse, repeat, sit.

Just an observation, we have been at this book for a year and are not quite a third of the way through it. At this rate, it will be a kalpa before we finish, at which point we all may be destroyed in the kalpa fire,,, or not

PS: I am not being flippant or (poorly) poetically zennie here. I feel this life of so many blinks rapidly dwindling to only a few, or maybe there are kalpas left - it all depends on how you count. Anyway, I feel my task in these last few life-blinks is to burn myself out in that fire. My life got both blessed and cursed early, so now my practice is to try and make the most of that tangled mess, and I am finding that it will take all this fading life to bring it all together into something meaningful that lives on. I'd love to end here with some flowery analogy, but it just doesn't fit: I am most certainly not a flower. The image that keeps coming to mind is how a cow eats his eats his grass and grain and then shits in the field. Back in the old days, for those that truly needed it, that shit could be gathered and dried and then burned to make a fire to keep warm and to shed important light. That's how I want to live on, as a shit kalpa fire. Pardon my grandiosity.

As for the book comment that started this, it was just a silly observation. But since Jundo brought it up and made me think more about it ... good teacher that he is ... who among us will see the end of this book? Or do we see that end each and every chapter? Week? Day? Post? Reading? Blink...?

I'm on a roadtrip with limited access to internet and typing on my ipod so I can't fully answer this yet; I should be back in a couple weeks but I was reading Ryokan the other day and found this poem that just seemed to beautifully express question 2's point:

Although from the beginning
I knew
the world is impermanent,
not a moment passes
when my sleeves are dry.
-Ryokan

Q1 - If we could find a place before thought, I would say yes. Until then...

Q2 - I feel as though one of the hindrances to growing up in a relatively privileged family/country is that one feels one is solely responsible for his own destiny. Conversely, negative things that happen in life are attributed to a certain lack of talent or work ethic. Sitting has opened the idea that some things in my life are beyond understanding, and probably beyond logic. They become an endless mental exercise that leaves me exhausted and unhappy. So, although I don't get it, I'm starting to leave it alone.

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

I don't really know that right now, but I do know sometimes.

In Zen Practice, we learn to be completely free of dualities right in and as a world of dualities ... are you getting the hang of that?

I don't get it. Not now. But I do get it when no one is looking.

Do you think a book like this has a beginning, and end?

Yes.

Where is the fire that you are in a rush to get to with sirens blasting?

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

I've been thinking about this one a lot, and if I don't write something now, before I do zazen it's going to consume me during zazen. lol

I don't find any conflict with my belief in God, my Christianity, and my Zen practice. I'm not a fundamental Christian, obviously. I believe in science; I don't have any qualms about it. I believe that God gave us minds to use them. I don't think anyone is excluded from God's Love. I don't think it is my place to judge others' lifestyles. I think those judgements are all on humanity.. trying to impose their idea of God onto others and then claiming that its God.

I don't claim to ever know God's will, but it doesn't stop me from always trying to find out and follow it. I think that is directly in line with Practice. Yes, I think Practice is important and sacred to be called out with an uppercase 'P' . But I don't think my Practice and belief are sacred in terms of them being mine; that's separation and vanity, not sacredness. They are sacred because they are everyone's. I sit for everyone, not to separate myself from everyone. I sit to be more compassionate with others, to understand what real love is for my fellow man... to see the 3 poisons that separate me from my fellow man (and woman of course... damned patriarchal language. lol).

I sometimes pray 'Our Lord's Prayer' after I chant the vow of atonement and the four bodhisattva vows. They are not different. The prayer is about being open and not resisting. Surrendering to Life... but a surrender that is not giving up but a means to real action... similar to Shikantaza. It sounds similar to what Dogen states in Genjokoan, and I'm paraphrasing because I'm too lazy to get it right now

To push ourselves onto things that we perceive out there. That is delusion. "You're gay, you can't get married. You aren't white, use a different bathroom. You are a savage culture, your land is mine." That's the religion of delusion.
To let things permeate our beings... to not resist, to let them come and go without grasping, that is Enlightenment. To allow us to be lived by life. To allow us to be sat by zazen. To let go of our false idol, our imaginary self independent from other things and allow our real self just be and live and enjoy life. That is the religion of God.

That statement that Dogen posits sounds very similar to "thy will be done" in "the Lord's prayer". How many times do I see "people", and myself included claim their stake of some belief they think is true and then use that to harm other people? That's my ego again. That's not God. No. God is 'thy will be done'. God is letting in the universe. God is acceptance. God is the judge, not me. God will worry about Heaven and Hell. I'm here to live right now as the best human I can be. Not best by titles, skills, money. Best by not harming ,by not doing evil, doing good and good for others. Truly finding out what it means to be human.. which includes all the shitty and boring days and not resisting and being there for others because I've allowed myself to truly experience the shit, I know how to empathize with others. That's real kinship. We are only here once, now (at least that's what I think); it's a precious gift not to be wasted. That's my God...well our God. All the same God even if we have different names, to paraphrase Macklemore.

Now going back to letting the universe in. I don't mean that I have to really let anything in... it's here all along, but psychologically I have to drop the imaginary barrier I've erected because I've been building it all my life, habit by habit. To me that's what my path is. That is what Shikantaza does... little by little I see myself, see all those thoughts swirling around and like Jundo says, just let them float on by like clouds in the sky.. not rejecting them, but just dropping them. Not forcing them away because those clouds are just as much me as sky, but not only holding onto the clouds so that I'm constantly living in a struggle of greed, anger and ignorance.

To me that is God. This life is a gift. This practice and this Sangha is a gift. It just take time to stop grasping and pushing to see the beauty that has been there all along.

Is God the same as Buddha? As three pounds of flax? As Mount Sumeru? In ancient China? In your living room? In a Catholic Church or a Buddhist Temple? At the start of the universe or at the finish? Big or small? Permanent or Impermanent? One or Many? Black or Red? Yes? No? Beyond and through-and-through all Yes-No?

I've spent my entire life pursuing these questions. Studying religion, spirituality, and philosophy has consumed me for the past three decades. Is there a god? What religion is the right one? Is science compatible with religion? What did I end up with? Three decades of anxiety and discontent. It wasn't until I realized that the answer was found in not having a question that I have recently begun to feel a far more 'profound' sense of contentment. God is not-god, buddha is not-buddha, god is buddha, or not. Really, who cares. I stopped trying so hard, my brain hurts less. The profound questions seem less important and the simple questions become the truly profound. I have found in just sitting, that the dualities seem to fade away, even the all-is-one, one-is-all, doesn't seem right. It isn't as if all dual things suddenly cease to exist, or that black suddenly is the same color as white, rather that the contrast is suddenly unimportant and accepting things as they are eliminates the differences.

Neika / Ian Adams

寧 Nei - Peaceful/Courteous
火 Ka - Fire

Look for Buddha outside your own mind, and Buddha becomes the devil. --Dogen